Ek­iti Ac­ci­dent Kills Corps Mem­ber, 14 Oth­ers

Peo­ple wept un­con­trol­lably in Iworoko Ek­iti in Ek­iti State yes­ter­day as the death toll in the trailer ac­ci­dent that oc­curred last Satur­day night hit 15.

The ac­ci­dent hap­pened in a mar­ket in Ire­po­dun/Ifelo­dun Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Area of Ek­iti State when a trailer car­ry­ing branded rice of an Ondo State politi­cian lost con­trol and rammed into the busy mar­ket.

Eye­wit­ness said that the truck sud­denly lost con­trol at about 8.45 p.m and killed the vic­tims, in­clud­ing a youth corps mem­ber and chil­dren.

The trailer also de­stroyed a com­mer­cial small bus which had some pas­sen­gers, shops, and a barb­ing saloon with stu­dents charg­ing their cell phones in­side it all trapped in the ac­ci­dent.

THISDAY gath­ered that more stu­dents could have fallen vic­tims but for the on­go­ing strike ac­tion by the Aca­demic Union of Univer­si­ties, (ASUU), which made many of the Ek­iti State Uni­ver­sity stu­dents res­i­dent in the town to travel to their homes out­side the town.

The scene of the bloody ac­ci­dent, it was gath­ered, used to be a bee­hive of ac­tiv­i­ties of the stu­dents at night.

When jour­nal­ists vis­ited the scene of the ac­ci­dent on yes­ter­day morn­ing, a huge crowd of sym­pa­this­ers were seen with some wail­ing while oth­ers are curs­ing the trailer driver for the mis­take.

It was gath­ered that the trailer had crushed a small com­mer­cial ve­hi­cle called ‘Akoto’.

Bags of rice , some of which had posters of a sen­a­to­rial can­di­date of the Ondo State All Pro­gres­sive Con­gress (APC), Tayo Ala­soadura, were scat­tered all over the ground.

The an­gry mob chased away a tow­ing truck of the state’s trans­port of­fice, say­ing that it had come too late to res­cue the vic­tims. They stoned the ve­hi­cle, forc­ing the driver to drive the ve­hi­cle away from the an­gry mob.

The mob also made at­tempt to chase away the ad­vanc­ing se­cu­rity team of the deputy gov­er­nor but was in­tim­i­dated by the heavy pres­ence of heav­ily armed se­cu­rity op­er­a­tives who later came to bring the deputy gov­er­nor.

Ad­dress­ing the chiefs of the com­mu­nity, the Deputy Gov­er­nor, Bisi Eg­beyemi, who rep­re­sented the Gov­er­nor of the state, Kay­ode Fayemi said: “The state gov­er­nor con­doles with fam­i­lies of those who have lost dear ones.